Department of Pathology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Project Title: Characterizing Macrophages as "Hide-Outs" for Chronic Pathogens
Award Year: 2021
Biography
Dr. Clayton received her Honors B.Sc. in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto and completed her Ph.D. in Immunology under the supervision of Dr. Mario Ostrowski at the same university, where she studied the interactions between the co-inhibitory molecule, Tim-3, and its receptor, Galectin-9, and how this affects T cell function. In 2015, Dr. Clayton joined Dr. Bruce Walker’s lab at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, where she studied the interactions between HIV-infected macrophages and CD8+ T cells and NK cells, showing that HIV-infected macrophages were resistant to killing by both cell types. In July of 2021, Dr. Clayton started her lab at UMass Chan (www.clayton-lab.org), with a focus on studying the mechanisms used by HIV-infected CD4+ T cells and macrophages to survive interactions with NK cells. Dr. Clayton has also established various other collaborations to study NK cell interactions with macrophages that are infected with other pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Ebola virus. By studying macrophages as “hide outs” for multiple pathogens, the goal of the lab is to uncover common mechanisms of resistance to killing, which can then be targeted for the development of therapies.